The Twelve Kingdoms: Skies of Dawn by Fuyumi Ono
This is the fourth Twelve Kingdoms novel to be translated into English, and the last one that was adapted into the anime. This is also the longest novel so far, following three initially independent plotlines that eventually coincide. In the central plotline, Yoko, the new king of Kei (all rulers are kings, and their spouses queens, regardless of gender) learns that being the destined ruler doesn’t mean you automatically know how to be a ruler, or understand anything about your kingdom or its people, and sets out to change that. In the second, Shoukei, the orphaned daughter of the deposed king of Sou, a ruthless dictator, seeks to reclaim her former privilege, and eventually learns what costs it came at, and in the third, another young woman from Japan, Suzu, sets out to find Yoko in the hopes of connecting with someone from her own home.
The anime adaptation of this is one of my favorite anime arcs ever. I’ve always loved Yoko’s storyline because of the acknowledgement that being the destined king/hero/whatever doesn’t mean you’re any good at it unless you seriously work at it, and Shoukei’s because it’s a similar growth arc to Yoko’s in the first book, save that there’s no epic destiny waiting for her at the end, and that she could be said to deserve some of the treatment she receives. Suzu’s storyline never interested me as much in the anime as the other two, and I still find it the least interesting of the three, but I think it worked better for me in book form.
The actual translation, I think, has improved since previous volumes-at least there was nothing to make me want to tear my hair out in frustration, like using distinctly European mythological terms to describe a world constructed around Chinese mythology-but the book was desperately in need of a copy editor. (I mean, I make tons of typos, but I don’t attach a $19.99 price tag to what I write as I immortalize my errors in print and release them to the world.) I suspect we’ll never get a truly good, well edited translation, but it’s probably little short of a miracle that we get the books at all.